Most, if not all the smartphones we use in Nigeria today are imported, so I was particularly delighted when I heard about Kosmos Mobile, a Nigerian smartphone manufacturing company (OEM) making modern smartphones in the country.
Kosmos Mobile is actually an arm of Kosmos Innovation International, a Nigerian company owned by Chris Ombeh, an enterprising young man looking to make a difference in Nigeria’s smartphone market.
The company started out by building mobile apps and similar software before branching out to the aspect of smartphone manufacturing as a result of the fascination of their CEO (Chris) by mobile technology.
Editor-in-Chief of Techpoint.ng, Muyiwa Matuluko recently met with the CEO of Kosmos Mobile and shares his interactions with him on the blog. According to the article, after Chris became fascinated with mobile tech and decided to make it a business, he began reading widely on mobile phone design, making Google his pocket dictionary.
The interest led him to eventually travel to China (the home of millions of smartphones and OEMs) to partner with manufacturers there in order to start his own line of smartphones.
Right now, Kosmos Mobile has two major smartphone prototypes amongst others which look like the real deal even though they’re still in the production stages. Muyiwa spent some time with the second model, and here are his hands-on pictures.
For the sake of simplicity and clarity, I’ll refer to the second prototype as Kosmos Mobile for the rest of the article.
Kosmos Mobile Hands-on Pictures – do they impress?
The Kosmos Mobile makes a firm impression upon holding it for the first time in the hands, and it wouldn’t take you long to find out why the phone seems so unusual in the hands; the Kosmos Mobile is 7.2mm thick, 0.1mm thinner than the iPhone 7 Plus!
Though he couldn’t weigh the device with a dedicated instrument, Muyiwa feels the Kosmos Mobile weighs less than 180 grammes. It has a 5.5-inch display with a Full HD (1920 * 1080) pixel resolution.
The smartphone comes with a fingerprint sensor which is located behind the smartphone at the centre of the device. The fingerprint sensor has a square shape instead of the regular round shape we’re used to, and while this might score the device a unique design point, it still needs to be improved upon or changed completely; Muyiwa reports that his attempts to unlock the device using the fingerprint scanner failed multiple times.
Now let’s move on the hands-on aspect.
The Kosmos Mobile comes with a headphone jack at the top
The speaker grills with the micro-USB charging port in between them are located at the bottom.
The volume rocker and power button ae thankfully located on the same side, to the right of the device.
And finally at the left of the device, the SIM tray is located.
The SIM tray on the Kosmos Mobile is particularly fascinating; it combines the dual SIM slot and microSD card slot on one single tray on just one side of the device. Now most smartphones these days come with Hybrid SIM slots (where you have to choose between using two SIMs at the same time or one SIM card and one SD card for internal storage expansion), or Dual SIM slots with no microSD slot. Even those that come with separate dual SIM slots and microSD slots usually separate both slots on separate sides of the device, like we have in the Infinix Zero and Zero 2.
Kosmos Mobile, however, comes with a fresh approach to the issue of SIM and SDcard slots. Both SIM slots and the micro SD card slot are all fitted into one single tray which is inserted into the left of the device. The GIF below explains better.
Innovative, isn’t it? We would like to see this design come to life when the mobile is released next year.
The Kosmos Mobile comes with an Octa-core processor and it packs a 2600mAh battery, which is probably the reason for its out-of-the-world thinness. As Muyiwa reported, the battery lasted about 4 hours on average use.
The Kosmos Mobile and its second and third models have a planned 2017 release, and the company is currently looking for investors to further fund the project.
Does the prospect of a “Made in Nigeria” smartphone excite you? What do you think of Kosmos Mobile? Share your thoughts below.
